Letters: It should not have taken ITV’s Post Office drama to galvanise outrage
SIR – I can think of nothing in my 67 years that makes me more ashamed to be British than the scandalous behaviour of the Post Office in the Horizon fiasco (Letters, January 8).
What makes me most ashamed is that it has taken a television dramatisation, ITV’s Mr Bates vs The Post Office, to spur our self-satisfied and self-protecting establishment into taking action.
Nigel Cowan
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
SIR – I have criticised countries such as Russia, which prosecutes and imprisons innocent citizens on trumped-up charges.
Now I learn that I live in a country that behaves in a similar manner. It is unbelievable that the head of the organisation involved received an honour. No one from the Post Office or Fujitsu has been properly held to account. Thank goodness for people like Alan Bates.
Margaret Clark
Preston, Lancashire
SIR – Politicians have taken a long time to find their moral compass on the Horizon scandal. Then there are the infected blood, Windrush and Grenfell Tower scandals.
What has happened to common sense and decency?
Col Douglas G Bryant FRCS (retd)
Northallerton, North Yorkshire
SIR – Although the scale of the Post Office scandal is unusual, such occurrences are sadly not that uncommon in large organisations, public and private.
A while ago, I became a foster carer for a county council some distance from my home. When the placement ended, I was subjected to a number of accusations. This was because I had dared to highlight shortcomings on the part of several staff members. Fortunately I had the time and resources to refute the allegations.
I once spent some time with an American executive who had worked on the PR for a major chemical company. He told me that when there was a serious complaint about spillages and pollution, the first step was not to help the communities involved but to discredit the complainants. He regretted some of these actions for the rest of his life.
Don’t think it can’t happen to you.
Mark Robbins
Bruton, Somerset
SIR – The catastrophic failures of the Post Office, which have ruined lives, illustrate a fatal flaw in human nature: the impulse to close ranks.
We see this within families, friendship groups and organisations both small and large. In the face of a challenge, people seek to protect their own. We can’t change human nature, but we can put in place robust systems that enable complaints to be taken seriously and acted upon. Such systems were clearly missing in the Post Office.
Stan Labovitch
Windsor, Berkshire
Heating old houses
SIR – I live in a listed Georgian property in a conservation area. On asking my plumber whether I could install a heat pump, he assured me that it could not possibly work in any of these old houses with no double glazing. A house needs to be totally insulated for a heat pump to be an option.
Now the Government is considering reversing the conservation rules that have kept us beautiful (albeit draughty) for all these years (report, January 4). The wonderful architecture in this country attracts thousands of visitors from abroad each year, and in my mind it would be extremely foolish to “spoil the ship for a ha’p’orth of tar”.
Maie Osborn
Wisbech, Cambridgeshire
SIR – Michael Gove, the Housing Secretary, says that he has no desire to see “historic homes blemished by ugly double glazing or inappropriate solar panels” (Letters, January 6).
Double or triple glazing need not be ugly. It is now so well engineered that it is hard to discern that the additional panes of glass are contained within the frame. My brother-in-law lives in a listed house that is a monster to heat, principally because the single-pane sash windows serve two purposes: to let heat escape and to bathe the occupants in freezing air during gales. If he were permitted to replace them with modern glazing, the energy bill would fall dramatically and his neighbours would be hard pressed to tell the difference between the new and the old.
Our local Grade I listed church has solar panels but they are not visible from the ground or the higher ground around the village.
It is high time politicians allowed much greater discretion to local authorities and owners.
Peter Gilbert
Llangarron, Herefordshire
Typed examinations
SIR – The University of Oxford has introduced typed examinations for some subjects (Letters, January 8). These were initially remote during the pandemic, but now include in-person, invigilated examinations. The university has acquired a collection of laptops, which are centrally charged ahead of each use. Answers are typed into a secure browser, which means they can be delivered instantly to the markers. The process is far simpler, and the markers are pleased with the lack of illegible scripts.
Some courses set a word limit so that students are required to maintain concise, comprehensive answers. I believe it’s better to give students the opportunity to show their knowledge in a format they are more familiar with, as opposed to limiting them by enforcing several hours of handwriting – a mode of delivery that is increasingly out of touch with the real world.
Richard Molyneux
Academic office deputy
Harris Manchester College
University of Oxford
Fame and fortune
SIR – As a teenager in the 1950s, I spent time at a school near Poitiers in France. The pupils were all girls, until we were joined by an English boy called Johnny. The principal informed us that he was the son of a famous film director called Lewis Gilbert.
Many years later, as I was leaving the art suppliers Green & Stone laden with canvases and paints, a gleaming Rolls-Royce drew up near me and out stepped Johnny (Letters, January 8). I made myself known to him and he offered me a lift, which I accepted. The encounter caused me to be glad that I was good at remembering faces.
Louise Boxhall
Thurlestone, Devon
Assisting suicide
SIR – When I taught criminal law at Cambridge, my students would have raised a quizzical eyebrow at David Milne KC’s opinion (Letters, January 5) that for the state to repeal the law’s historic prohibition on helping people to kill themselves (and, we may add, to pay its doctors to facilitate it) would not signal approval. But one does not need a law degree to appreciate that, just as the criminal prohibition on assisting suicide signals disapproval, decriminalisation would signal approval. The moral case advanced for legalising physician-assisted suicide is that it is right for some people to be helped to a hastened death to end their suffering.
The House of Lords Select Committee on Medical Ethics, in its rejection of assisting suicide and euthanasia, described the prohibition on intentionally killing patients as the “cornerstone of law and of social relationships” that “protects each one of us impartially, embodying the belief that all are equal”. We should not let the smokescreen of “choice” blind us to the fact that removing that cornerstone would signal a paradigm moral shift. That shift would have particularly grave implications for those, such as people with disabilities, leading lives it might also be thought reasonable to help them to end.
Mr Milne supports physician-assisted suicide for the “terminally ill”. But why deny choice to the chronically ill (who also fly to Switzerland) and to the vast majority of patients who would prefer a lethal injection? The deafening silence of UK campaigners in response to that question illustrates that once one sacrifices the principle of objective human equality on the altar of subjective “choice”, there is no principled stopping point.
Mr Milne rightly notes that a key aim of the law is the protection of citizens. Helping terminally ill citizens to kill themselves (which would prove but a first step) is a peculiar way of protecting them.
Professor John Keown
Kennedy Institute of Ethics
Georgetown University
Washington DC, United States
Olive toil
SIR – I planted four olive trees about 25 years ago. With the largely mild winter, we have an abundance of ripe black olives. One year I tried to preserve them but was not very successful.
This year I have found that the local pigeons like them. They are on the bushes eating them whole. I don’t know where the stones go.
Birgitta Fowler
Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex
The risks of becoming a dog-friendly hotel
SIR – Lottie Gross (“The ‘Dinkwad’ pets who travel better than you”, Travel, January 6) omits a pertinent issue regarding travelling with dogs.
Do hotels that now offer stays for pets acknowledge that this might deter other possible guests from booking? I am an avid dog lover, but still prefer to know that the seating and bedspreads in my expensive hotel room have not been previously occupied by furry friends.
There is also the risk that dogs will be pampered and become the centre of attention in lounges and – worse still – dining rooms.
Marianne Charlesworth
Norwich
How the MoD failed to stop the rot in the Navy
SIR – The rot in the Royal Navy (Letters, January 8) began with the so-called peace dividend 1988-91. The ill thought-through introduction of the Warfare Branch in 1993 coincided with a major round of redundancies. Forecasts at the time warned of “black holes” (severe shortages of qualified personnel) in the immediate term at leading rate level and longer term at senior rate level.
These fell on deaf ears in the Ministry of Defence and Navy Board, and acute shortages followed. Short-termist thinking led to the decommissioning of perfectly good warships so that newer ones could be manned. Outsourcing recruitment to Capita proved a disaster.
Politicians claiming that “lessons will be learnt” inevitably means they won’t, and the Treasury in particular will force through measures that the country will surely regret. With 90 per cent of the world’s trade going by sea – and unrest spreading to hinder safe passages – this is not the time to ignore our vital maritime interests.
Cdr John R M Prime RN (retd)
Havant, Hampshire
SIR – In August I spent a day at sea in the Type 23 frigate, HMS Iron Duke. It is 30 years old and has recently undergone a £103 million refit. She is a fine ship, with a happy and highly motivated ship’s company – a sign of good leadership at all levels.
It would be a travesty were she, like others of her type, to be sacrificed because of personnel shortages (report, January 5) – which can only be attributed to incompetence.
There’s no better illustration of poor long-term strategic thinking by the MoD than the 1981 Defence White Paper, which set out plans to cut the Royal Navy by 19,500 personnel (of which I was one) and decommission some County, Leander and Rothesay-class ships. Within a year we were at war with Argentina, which, despite clear signs, seemed to come as a surprise to the MoD.
Until long-term strategic thinking is the norm, our Armed Forces will continue to lurch from crisis to crisis.
Dr Alf Crossman
Rudgwick, West Sussex
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